Sunday Times editor arrested in Mauritius after police raid house

GAA legend Mickey Harte pictured with his late daughter Michaela, on her wedding dayFamily handout

The editor of the Mauritian paper which published photos of Michaela McAreavey taken at the scene of her murder has been arrested.

Imran Hosany was taken into custody early on Wednesday morning after police raided the office of the Sunday Times newspaper.

Police on the holiday island have confirmed that he is under investigation after his newspaper published photographs of Michaela’s dead body in last Sunday’s edition.

Authorities in Mauritius moved against the newspaper and its editor after widespread condemnation of the publication.

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny formally complained to the government in Mauritius.

The family of Michaela McAreavey, murdered on her honeymoon in January 2011, have also rejected a formal apology from Hosany.

He is now to be questioned about the source of the photos with police confident the source of the leak to the Sunday Times will be confirmed within days.

Reports from the island say that the country’s Prime Minister has announced that he knows who leaked the photographs.

PM Navin Ramglooam has claimed that the source of the pictures did not come from within the police force itself but from someone else close to the case.

Prior to his arrest, Sunday Times editor Hosany had said that the motive for publication was not sensationalism but rather ‘to recall that such a heinous crime remained unpunished’.

He later apologised to the McAreavey family but his apology was rejected by Michaela’s husband John and her own Harte family.

A statement from the family said: “If the Mauritian Sunday Times editor is, as he has claimed, fully co-operating with the police, then the best and most obvious form of apology would be to tell them how his newspaper came into receipt of these photographs. This would be a start to taking some degree of personal responsibility.

“The hurt this man and his newspaper have caused over the past 48 hours cannot be undone. As an editor he made a calculated decision to use photographs and images that no responsible media outlet would have touched.

“The editor further exacerbated his actions by printing an inexcusable editorial in a feeble attempt to justify what was wholly unjustifiable.”

Police on both sides of the Irish border have offered to send detectives to Mauritius to help with the McAreavey case after two hotel workers were acquitted of Michaela’s murder last week.